Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner to speak Monday to students

Marie Wilson

Marie Wilson, one of three commissioners leading the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada, will speak to York University students on Monday about the impact of more than a century of forced residential schooling for Aboriginal children.

Marie WilsonThe talk will take place Monday, July 9, at 4pm in Vari Hall B, Keele campus. Everyone is welcome to attend.

Marie Wilson

Appointed as a commissioner in 2009, Wilson is an award-winning journalist and executive manager who has lived and worked in many cross-cultural environments internationally and in Canada, including in the North. A broadcasting pioneer, she launched the first daily television news service for northern Canada against a backdrop of four time zones and ten languages − English, French and eight Indigenous.

As part of South Africa’s transition to democracy, she delivered training through the South African Broadcasting Corporation at the time that South Africa’s own Truth & Reconciliation Commission was starting up.

She has also worked, over several decades, with Aboriginal, church and political organizations committed to social justice, civic engagement, community and spiritual development, and the well-being of children and youth.

Wilson will speak to students in the sociology course Indigenous Resistance in Global Contexts, led by Peter Dawson of the Department of Sociology in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.

The talk is sponsored by the  Indigenous Resistance in Global Contexts class of the Human Rights and Equity Program at York along with the Centre for Human Rights and Calumet College.

For more information about the commission, visit the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada website.